Traumatic Injuries
Your character's just taken a nasty wound. Now just how dangerous is it?
| Shocks |
|
A great many injuries will induce hypovolemic shock, a complex set of reactions evolved to compensate for loss of blood pressure. In shock, blood is diverted from skin and muscles to vital organs, and platelet aggregation is increased. Note that septic shock has essentially the same symptoms. Mild to Moderate Shock: 10%-25% of blood lost. The patient will be pale, have rapid, shallow breathing and have a high heart rate, will sweat and will feel quite weak. He will be thirsty, his extremities will be cool and his senses will start to cloud. Even the most stout of heroes will start to feel a rising panic from purely physiologic hormonal reactions. Severe Shock: (30%-50% of blood lost). Platelet aggregation in the lungs will lead to respiratory failure. Failure of cellular processes will lead to sequential systems failure, frequently starting with the heart and kidney. Basically you stop breathing, your heart stops, everything else fails and you die. This can take anywhere from hours to days after the initial injury.
Extremities: |
| Chest (Thoracic) Injuries |
| Trauma that is inflicted on the chest can result in damage to the chest wall, lungs, trachea, major bronchi, oesophagus, thoracic duct, heart, diaphragm, mediastinal vessels, and spinal cord. Any combination of these injuries may occur.
Abdominal and Pelvic Injuries: Aorta and Arteries: Blood Vessels: Collar Bone or Shoulder Blade Fractures: Diaphragm: Flail Chest: Heart: Intestines: Pelvis Fracture: Pulmonary Parenchyma: Rib Fractures: Spleen or Liver: Stomach Muscles: Sucking Wounds: Tension Pneumothorax: Urinary Tract: |
| Head Injuries |
| Face: All sort of bones can be broken in the face; the face plate, sinuses, cheekbones, the orbits of the eye, and of course, the nose. There are a wide variety of possible symptoms, but severe facial injury usually results in progressive swelling, resulting in difficulty breathing, inhalation of blood, frequently eventually (1 hour) completely closing off the airways, resulting in suffocation. There may also be numbness or paralysis in some part of the face. Facial injuries can also lead to extreme haemorrhage and shock. Jaw: Scalp: Skull: Even the most minor head injury will result in the character being stunned for D4 rounds (all abilities halved). |
| Neck Injuries |
| There are a lot of important things passing through the neck, including the spinal cord, larynx and trachea, phrenic nerve, brachial plexus, carotid artery, jugular vein, cranial nerves, oesophagus and pharynx, thyroid gland, and stellate ganglion. Of course, many of these may be damaged simultaneously. Possible symptoms for damage to each of these are listed below. Not all will necessarily be present.
Brachial Plexus: numbness and/or partial paralysis in an arm. Carotid artery: decreased level of consciousness, heavy bleeding (which may compress the trachea causing difficulty breathing), and hypovolemic shock. Cranial nerves: inability to shrug a shoulder or rotate chin to opposite shoulder, paralysis of the tongue, hoarseness, and difficulty in swallowing. Jugular vein: heavy bleeding, hypovolemic shock. Larynx and trachea: spitting blood, a sucking neck wound, hoarseness, difficulty breathing, high pitched, noisy respiration. Oesophagus and pharynx (connects to your stomach): difficulty swallowing, bloody saliva, sucking neck wound. Spinal cord: partial or total paralysis. Stellate ganglion: dilated pupil. Thyroid gland, phrenic nerve: no special short term effects. Also, damage to the muscles in the neck will mean that the patient is unable to hold his head upright. |